The year 2024 was the ultimate flop era of romance, at least the filmy kind. While Gen Z situationships infected algorithms like the new-age epidemic, Bollywood movies offered barely anything to keep the dream of love alive. Forget showing the peculiarities of online dating, movie plots didn’t offer decent love songs for couples to use in their imaginary wedding videos. Pull out the chart of this year’s most successful romantic films and you’ll see that scriptwriters have given up—all they have to offer is Vicky Kaushal’s overhyped beard and Janhvi Kapoor’s nasal outbursts.
Dating hasn’t been central to Hindi movies for a while now. It’s either nationalism or mytho-fiction or action. Since many of us are meeting our dates through online apps, has Bollywood given up on old-style romance and unwilling to adapt to the new?
Janhvi Kapoor’s Mahi meets Rajkummar Rao’s Mahi only twice in Mr & Mrs Mahi—barely any exchange of memes in the interval—and gets hitched. Tripti Dimri’s Saloni eats golgappa with Vicky Kaushal’s Akhil only once in Bad Newz and their parents start matching their kundalis. Why can’t we let couples date each other first?
My favourite hate-watch of the year was Shahid Kapoor and Kriti Sanon’s Teri Baaton Mein Aisa Uljha Jiya. The engineer male protagonist is so done with real women and their very real ‘tantrums’ that he keeps turning down dates. Then, when he meets a sexy robot (Kriti Sanon) who can cook, act dumb, shut up, and be as good as new every morning, he quickly puts a ring on it and becomes a picture of a happy man. After all, he was living the urban myth—a happy girlfriend. He smashes her head in the end, harping about heartbreak and modern adults’ excessive dependence on technology and AI. But if you ask me, this movie is about deeper things. Such as making fun of unmarried people as a family sport, marriage-crazy mummy jis, and ek laute bete ki shaadi (only son’s wedding). Basically, the film is all about marriage, vivaah, shaadi.
What’s with this overexcited, borderline-depressive obsession Bollywood couples have with sprinting to the marriage track right in the first act? I want the pre-proposal side of the story. Something that can count as art of loving. A play-by-play of things to figure out in the end who was the toxic partner. A love story so intense and life-ending that it makes me bawl in the theatre. Apparently, I am asking too much. Take Sobhita Dhulipala’s Love, Sitara. It’s a decently emotional love story with very Indian family drama vibes but something just doesn’t feel right. I have a problem that it’s not a boy-meets-girl but girl-thinks-about-getting-married-then-finds-a husband. Hell, the pillow talk is all about what kind of husband (busy and weird) and wife (clingy and annoying) they will be.
It’s barely shocking that the best romantic comedy of the year is Sriram Raghavan’s murder mystery Merry Christmas. It’s a whole package. A never-ending first date, complicated exes, jail, police and ultimately, the lover boy’s big sacrifice. The comedy starts right when the fresh-off-the-streets couple have their first drink together. I think 2024 Bollywood romcoms peaked in January because that’s when this film was released.
The only other Hindi film I liked this year is Girls Will Be Girls. Though not exactly a romance, the movie gets too real about teenage dating. The poor kiddy couple isn’t even allowed to stand next to each other in school. What is more Indian than that? My favourite bit in the film is when the school head girl-cum-class topper-cum-protagonist records a birthday message for her boyfriend on a cassette tape. The boy couldn’t bother listening to it. That’s a heartbreaking romantic movie right there.
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(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)
